Apr 26 2007
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Retro UFO Conference Report
The first day of the second annual Retro UFO Conference, organized by Barbara Harris, was an unqualified success in my book. Attendance was down from last year, but this was probably due to the higher entrance fee. Fine by me. Separates the hardcore from the dilettantes.
Contactee and founder of the College of Universal Wisdom, George Van Tassel would have been proud. Van Tassel leased a few hundred acres out here in the California high desert to open a small airstrip and dude ranch in the late 1940s. In the early ’50s, he was woken out of a sound sleep by a being called “Solganda,” who told him, “we would be pleased to show you our craft.” This began (Van Tassel claimed) a continuing series of contacts with friendly Space Brothers, who slowly revealed the secrets of spiritual existence to him. He organized an Interplanetary Space Craft Convention soon afterwards, which convened annually for 23 years up to the year before his death in 1977.
Luckily for us, they also told him to build a machine that would allow humans to live long enough to achieve enlightenment in one incarnation. The result is the gleaming white Integratron, which remains unfinished and looks like a sort of astronomical observatory. The lectures and merchandise tables were actually set up inside the building this year.
Harris and Integratron co-owner Joanne Karl were at the gate to greet us on arrival at 11AM. Contactee Rev. Robert Short was already into his talk on the early days at Giant Rock. Short reminisced about personalities such as Truman Bethurum, Orfeo Angelucci, and George Hunt Williamson, who also claimed communications and contact with people from space, and related their messages of peace and stern warnings about man’s toying with nuclear weapons. On one occasion, Short said, a small group of supporters watched as a huge flying saucer landed near the Giant Rock Airstrip and Van Tassel actually drove his truck up a ramp and inside before the ship lifted up thousands of feet and parked itself high above the dark desert floor. When he returned, all Van Tassel could say was, “Well, that certainly was interesting.”
Amazingly, according to Short, Plan 9 From Outer Space star and pop psychic Criswell made the scene at some of the early Giant Rock conventions. Maybe he was there to pick up new ideas. I experienced a sharp pang of misplaced temporal nostalgia while Short related this story. Who has the faded black-and-white photo of Criswell shaking hands with George Adamski? I’ll pay top dollar.
Bob Benson demonstrates the workings of the Integratron.
Photo by Adam Gorightly
After lunch, self-taught electrician and historian Bob Benson told a small crowd about his efforts to rebuild the Integratron. He demonstrated a small model that he has built showing the planned operation of the device. Benson explained that the building was in effect supposed to act as a giant capacitor, with the dome area acting as the positive pole, and the huge round room beneath it as the negative. This is the area where people would pass though for “cell rejuvenation.” A series of poles that project from the lower section are supposed to rotate around the outside of the building to build up the charge. Benson thinks that Van Tassel was onto something, and his goal can be achieved with something on the order of about $20-30,000 (that’s my estimate.) It seems like Ufological sugar daddies like Robert Bigelow or Joe Firmage could kick that in without any problem. The money they have spent already apparently hasn’t come to much. Even if it doesn’t work as planned, it would be a great tourist attraction.
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April 26th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Gregg,
That events sounds like a riot!
Jess
April 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am
OK well there’s a new “Axis of Evil” in the universe — left-hand galactic spiral asymmetry. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0703325v2
April 27th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Jess,
It was both funny and touching. As you can probably tell, I have a soft spot for the contactee movement. I’m willing to suspend disbelief, or at least enjoy these examples of space-age religion. The remaining contactees are literally a dying breed, and this fascinating chapter of Ufology will soon be no more.